Great Site Linked, but still have more questions

Great Site Linked, but still have more questions

Tony (guest) 04 Dec 2010 23:25

http://www.phy6.org/stargaze/StarFAQ11.htm

This person has been answering questions for years. He is a retired physicist…not sure if your website has it in the links section. You can see how from the start he gets extremely normal questions, and then it just gradually fades into questions about 2012.

It helped me a lot with understanding the Earth's rotation, and what it would require to stop it. However, still haven't been able to find anything about if a magnetic charge the same polarity as our magnetic field…would have a strong enough bond to grab a spinning mass the size of the moon. I read somewhere that the outer layer metals can diffuse into the inner core (which is what keeps the field from reversing on a consistent basis). But if something were to force it while it is in the inner core, then the core itself would be overwhelmed and be flipped (hopefully I didn't help out any psuedoscientists reading this page). Sorry about all these questions, I just really need a clear understanding of the physics involved…so I can somehow scale it down to show myself whats possible and what isn't. I always play with magnets and use same sides of the magnets to flip it and have it stick to the other side…so its hard for me to understand all this

Moo (guest) 04 Dec 2010 23:37

I wouldn't worry about this, Tony. The amount of force needed to flip the core would be a lot more than the force needed to stop the rotation of the planet. Twice as much. Because of…

Step 1) You need to stop an object to flip it.

Step 2) You need to restart an object to have successfully flipped it over and restarted it's movement.

The sheer amount of force needed to do this? Earth would melt. We'd all be instantly dead anyway or close to it so we likely wouldn't be aware of this anyway.

Thus, don't worry about it. You won't even notice it happen. Because it's blippin' impossible and Geryl is insane.

Re: Great Site Linked, but still have more questions

obaeyens 05 Dec 2010 00:28

It is hard to get some numbers but this is what I found:

Earth Magnetic field 0.3 Gaus .. 0.6 Gaus depending on where you are located.
Now compare this with a Neodymium magnets of 12,500 gauss

Solar flares are caused by magnetic fields but that is at the sun. Normally around 1 Au both negative and positive charges in the solar wind cancels each other out making the solar wind neutral. I did fins some document somewhere (lost the link) that showed that a boundary could be formed around 1 Au and the magnetic field would be somehow be around 0.05 Gaus. It does not matter what the precise numbers are, they are incredibly weak.

But even if you assume that the magnetic field force would be incredible strong, the mass of the solar flare acting on the Earth is like a ping pong ball trying to topple a fully loaded mega oil tanker. Imagine that you are out there with your 12,500 Gauss magnet the weight of a ping ping ball throw the magnet to the supertanker and expecting the supertanker to topple over. Just impossible.

Last edited on 05 Dec 2010 00:43 by obaeyens Show more

Re: Great Site Linked, but still have more questions

obaeyens 05 Dec 2010 00:43

The above example is a magnet with the mass of a ping pong ball against a static fully loaded mega-supertanker.
Now you have to realize that Earth is spinning and it is a giant gyroscope. Giant gyroscopes refuse to topple over.
In this case a spinning mega-supertanker.

So I got these numbers calculated for the spinning inner core:

• Volume for Earth Inner core = 8.74342*10^18 m^3
• Mass for Earth Inner core = 1.13227*10^23 kg (I took into account the density for the inner core)
• Moment of Inertia for: 2/5 x mass x Radius^2: Earth Inner core = 7.39729*10^34 kg m^2
• Angular momentum = Impulse x omega: Earth Inner core = 5.37946*10^30 J s

I have not yet calculated the force it would require to topple over the inner core while rotating. And especially how the earth would change direction. First of all the rotation axis won't be the poles any-more, the sun is not going to come up in the west but maybe Se or NW, and second one day will not be 24 hours anymore.

Last edited on 05 Dec 2010 00:44 by obaeyens Show more

Tony (guest) 05 Dec 2010 19:03

I used some wikipedia averages of a CME and the mass of the inner core (1.86 % of the total mass of the Earth). I made the CME 1,000,000 times larger than the average. I came to a ratio of 3.52 : 236,558.52 in lbs.

So for every 3.52lbs of the CME, there are 236,558.52lbs of mass in the inner core. In comparison, the largest passenger airplane (A380) weighs 200,000 lbs. So pretty much you would have to flip it using something that weighs 4 lbs using their magnetic properties (pretending they had them).

These calculations could be wayyy off so maybe one of you who is better with them could correct it.

I don't know much about magnetics, but obaeyens…are you saying that the magnetics are too week to be coupled since the mass involved is so high?

obaeyens 05 Dec 2010 21:48

I don't know much about magnetics, but obaeyens…are you saying that the magnetics are too week to be coupled since the mass involved is so high?

A few things:

• Gravitationally, the CME is like a bacteria hitting your wind screen. Earth would not notice a CME hitting itself because the CME has the mass of a bacteria compared to a car. Gravity woks on the complete Earth, not only on the inner core.
• The CME is basically charged neutral; You have equal positive and negative charges flying in the cloud. So the magnetic attraction force is near zero.
• The Earth magnetic field is disappointingly small compared to a regular magnet you can buy in the shops (12000 Gauss compare this to 0.6 Gauss Earth field) If Earths magnetic field would be strong then any magnet you point to the North pole would fly out of you hand because it gets deflected or pulled depending of your North-South pole orientation.
• But lets pretend that the magnetic force would be incredibly strong. The CME is a free floating gas. It is not attached to something fixed. It means that Earth would eat the CME for breakfast and suck the CME down instead of the CME be able to change a rotation of Earth.
• The above examples are assuming the Earths core is not spinning. When you take spinning into account it gets even worse, it is a big gyroscope resisting any force on the poles big time.
• And the inner core is not free floating, it has friction with the outer core which also adds big time to the force needed to turn over the inner core. It will drag the complete Earth with it because of this friction. I actually doubt that it would be able to reverse the direction of Earth, I think that the inner spinning core would slow down and take the normal direction of Earth's even when it is upside down since because it just lacks the amount of stored energy. It might slow down Earth a bit but not reverse its direction.

OK something else:

• Your 1,000,000 times larger CME, do you thing that this is physically possible to be created by the Sun? Where would the energy come from at the sun to create such a big one? How many CME's are actually occurring in a 11 year cycle?
• Also a CME, is not a concentrated mass, in the shape of a ball. It is a big cloud spread over a huge volume. So there is no one single force pulling at one single location, you infinite numbers of force vectors pulling in different directions cancelling out each others force vector.

Last edited on 05 Dec 2010 21:57 by obaeyens Show more

Tony (guest) 05 Dec 2010 22:18

Thanks! Good info there.

I only used a CME 1,000,000 times larger just because Geryl says "a gargantuan" one will be produced. He didn't give numbers in the quote, I dont know if he does elsewhere.

Re: Great Site Linked, but still have more questions

CaneLaz 06 Dec 2010 02:02

This is an awesome explanation. Right on Tony and Obaeyens!

Is there anyway this can be added to the already great material on the Geryl page you folks created?